The recent recommendation by government advisers that “fracking” for shale gas is safe to resume is bad news for anyone concerned about climate change. But is the way this issue has been framed – the language and metaphors through which it is represented – a help or a hindrance?

The term ‘fracking’ is shorthand for hydraulic fracturing, the process by which rock fissures are forced open with a mix of water and chemicals to release gas trapped deep below the earth’s surface. It is also a euphemism – popularised by the 1978 TV series Battlestar Galactica – for the word ‘fuck’. Geoscience and associated industries remain male-dominated (only 8% of US geology professors are women for example) so the term was almost certainly adopted into the industry by men, easily drawn to a sanitised expletive which at a deeper level expresses disturbing but not uncommon ideas about the relationships between men and women and the relationships between humans and the rest of the natural world. « Read the rest of this entry »